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Re: Putting a freestanding stove into my fireplace box? Why not?

Thank you Enj for all the info, next time I install a wood stove I will get something more efficient, but mine still beats my electric central heat. I've got a couple of years experience with my 1950's era parlor stove. The drought has killed so many oaks and pecans I just run around with an electric chain saw and gather free wood all year and during the winter too, its all been curing waiting for someone to clean up. But the next time, yes, I want a different style of house and probably a rocket stove built in, but that's a ways down the road. .

Stuck in Texas. Learning Permaculture in drought, guess I will teach permaculture in drought. The bees are still alive.

Re: Putting a freestanding stove into my fireplace box? Why not?

I have built rocket stoves several times. they have to be pretty exact and the larger they are the better they work. But man do they work.

Mark i could actually let you see what burning the smoke looks like. You think the camp fire looks hot. That is nothing.

here is the basic idea. when you add heat to wood it actually breaks down into a gas. that gas will burn . it will also rise. Smoke is just the visible particles of that fuel but there is more in it that you do not see. Btu smoke rising is about the same thing as having a huge leak in your fuel tank. the smoke (fuel) rises and is then out of the heat that would burn it. So the question is how can you keep that fuel in the heat long enough to burn the rocket heater is one answer to that. the wood burns but then all the smoke and other non burned stuff still wants to rise. the rocket heater simply lets it move to another place the is still hot enough to burn it. And the difference is about like the difference between burning wood or burning gasoline. The problem is it takes back pressure in the chimney to keep the gasses where they will finish burning. Basically this means there is a very fine balance as to which way the smoke is going to go. With very little wind or additional back pressure the smoke will go the wrong way and end up in the house.

Plus just how long could you have a bucket of gasoline burning in your house before it made tit to hot? Not long. IN fact you typically do not have to burn a rocket heater very long to get all the heat you need for 24 hours. but you have to be able to store that heat. That is where you step up to the Rocket Mass Heater. The RMH adds a mass that captures and stores the heat.And it is a huge mass.weighing tons.

I am actually looking at designing a RMH with vertical piping for the mass and heat transfer but that retains more of the pressure of a traditional chimney. Rather than being a straight shot up the stove pipe will serpentine through a traditional massive stone chimney. The chimney serves as the heat storage mass. Rather than just an 8 or ten foot run of stove pipe the exhaust of this stove would pass through something closer to 40 feet of pipe before rising through the roof. It would be more of a spiral like the worm of a still. allowing the stone in the chimney time to absorb the heat from the exhaust before it leaves. Such a stove can run on fuel that is no more than typical pruning from trees. You do not use logs. you use twigs to fuel it.

I actually plan to build one at each of my out yards. for the purpose of cooking food making coffee having a warm place to set in our chilly mornings and simply a place to set at all. you can make the mass a bench or even a bad if you like.They will run on not much more fuel than you will put in a smoker.